Application and music lens missing in the dash

Thank you for reporting this bug to make Ubuntu better. Can you check if the unity-lens-applications and unity-lens-music is installed on your system? The problem could due to,

1. Application and Music lens are not installed on your system. (Unlikely, but still worth a check)
You can do this by typing the following in the terminal ¨apt-cache policy unity-lens-applications & apt-cache policy unity-lens-music¨ without quotes.

I have both the packages intalled. Here is the output of the commands:

vinay@vinay-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy unity-lens-applications; apt-cache policy unity-lens-music
unity-lens-applications:
  Installed: 5.10.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 5.10.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 5.10.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
unity-lens-music:
  Installed: 5.10.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 5.10.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 5.10.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Do let me know if you want me to check something else.

-- VInay

Can you check if unity-applications-daemon and unity-music-daemon are running as processes on your system? You can see this in the gnome system monitor. If they are and you still do not see the lenses in the dash please try "unity --reset" in the terminal. This will reset your unity configuration to default. If all this doesnt work, then I will mark the bug confirmed and get another person to triage it for the developers.

Thanks for your prompt reply. It seems the said daemons are not running. How do I start them?

-- VInay

Vinay, can you try running /usr/lib/unity-lens-music/unity-music-daemon and /usr/lib/unity-lens-music/unity-music-daemon in the terminal? These two commands will try to start the daemon manually and also produce some output in the terminal. Please copy these output and include them in your next comment. This way the developers will be able to see the debug output.

Marking this bug confirmed meanwhile.

Here is the output:

vinay@vinay-desktop:~$ /usr/lib/unity-lens-music/unity-music-daemon &
[1] 7715
vinay@vinay-desktop:~$ failed to open db, 14, unable to open database file
Failed to open the Banshee collection database

vinay@vinay-desktop:~$ /usr/lib/unity-lens-applications/unity-applications-daemon &
[2] 7726
vinay@vinay-desktop:~$
(process:7726): unity-applications-daemon-WARNING **: daemon.vala:121: Unable to open ratings database environment '/home/vinay/.cache/software-center/reviews.ubuntu.com_reviews_api_1.0_review-stats-pkgnames.p__5.1.db.dbenv': No such file or directory

-- VInay

I removed (with --purge) and (re)installed the two packages: unity-lens-applications and unity-lens-music (with related packages). Then the application and music tabs were restored after the system reboot (logoff is sufficient).

Thus I feel that these two applications (and unity-lens-video) should have dependency with dash. Of course itdepends on the individual's point of view.

In any case this thing should at least be documented somewhere.

@ Others affected by this bug:
can somebody confirm whether this solution works for you? It will be easier to close the bug.

-- VInay

@Vinay: I removed / reinstalled the unity-lens applications (included -files) and it worked for me. Thanks.

The only lens that don't works for me is the Applications one. So I have removed and re-installed this lens, but unfortunately for me this workaround doesn't work.

Just to complete the information, I have opened the bug #1038221 with the details of my problem that is considered as a duplicate of the present one. The difference is that the Applications lens for me is never missing, but is not working until I restart Unity.

Well I think I have discovered what wasn't working for me. Strange enough, but I have installed right now the proprietary Nvidia drivers, instead of the open source nouveau drivers. After the reboot, the Applications Lens now is working fine.
I don't know how the graphic drivers can influence the boot sequence and hence the Dash's behavior, but at least for me this is the case.